First time build

MrFlyingbananasMar 13, 2012, 3:51 AM

I am willing to spend 700-850 at the most on the motherboard, RAM, HDD, SSD, Optical Drive, CPU, and CPU cooler for that is good for overclocking. All the rest I either have or I have them picked out.If you could get a motherboard that is easy for someone who knows little about overclocking, yet wants to, and doesn't want to fry his system.

Mobo- I would go with the Z68 chipset. I would consider Asus brand. I used to recommend Gigabyte, I've got an Asus Sabertooth thats gonna be here tomorrow (Tigerdirect was really cool about letting me swap brands) I had a great Gigabyte one, worked fine.. Til it died a month after having it.. due to that I won't recommend a mobo model. $120-200

I've got a set of those Hyper Blue Kingstons as backup/diagnostic set. They work great, only downside is they're running at 1.65 volts. Corsair has their 1600mhz's running at 1.5v. I wouldn't mix em, and for future upgrades, I think you're gonna see more 1.5vs for DDR3.. at least thats my thought on it.

Mobo- I would go with the Z68 chipset. I would consider Asus brand. I used to recommend Gigabyte, I've got an Asus Sabertooth thats gonna be here tomorrow (Tigerdirect was really cool about letting me swap brands) I had a great Gigabyte one, worked fine.. Til it died a month after having it.. due to that I won't recommend a mobo model. $120-200

The CPU cooler says that it doesn't support 1155 socket. Also microcenter has the i5 2500k CPU for less than the tigerdirect one.

It doesn't say it supports Bulldozer FX processors either, but it does. It comes with hardware to support a ton of CPUs.

As far as microcenter, I don't recommend parts from them simply because my shopping experience with them, they hit you with sales tax and shipping and it ends up being no cheaper than Tigerdirect or newegg.

The CPU cooler says that it doesn't support 1155 socket. Also microcenter has the i5 2500k CPU for less than the tigerdirect one.

It doesn't say it supports Bulldozer FX processors either, but it does. It comes with hardware to support a ton of CPUs.

As far as microcenter, I don't recommend parts from them simply because my shopping experience with them, they hit you with sales tax and shipping and it ends up being no cheaper than Tigerdirect or newegg.

The parts he gave you were for reference only, you will find pretty much the same selection between all 3 stores. Sometimes we have preferences of which sites we like to navigate when recommending parts, you can easily find the model numbers on the site of your choice.

The parts he gave you were for reference only, you will find pretty much the same selection between all 3 stores. Sometimes we have preferences of which sites we like to navigate when recommending parts, you can easily find the model numbers on the site of your choice.

The Z68 Express’ drive controller monitors usage patterns on the hard drive and copies the most frequently accessed bits of data from the drive to the SSD.

Like other SSD / HD hybrid storage technologies, the data on the hard drives has to be accessed multiple times before it is copied to the solid state storage volume. So, the contents of the SSD will dynamically and constantly change over time, based on usage. The most commonly accessed data on the platters gets copied to the much higher performing SSD, which results in a performance boost when that data needs to be fetched.

so window's boot files and what programs or games you use the most migrate over to the SSD improving the performance. what you don't access much stays on the platter. unless you change your habits or what programs you use, it will stay the same. the less data is written to an SSD the longer it's life. SSD life expectancies are expressed in data written.

if someone has the money to spend $1.60 a gig for a pair of 254Gig quality SSDs to put in raid1 then great, use it as a system drive. if someone is going to get a cheap 128 Gig and throw an OS on it, they take the risk of losing their OS after a year. its better to get a quality 64gig SSD and use it for caching. it may not be as fast as an SSD OS drive but it will be secure and a lot faster than a platter.

Can't we all just get along? I'm not going to comment on the SmartResponse, because I'm not too familiar with it, if it works great. Its something worth looking into to.

Quote:

1. At least he uses your and he uses you instead of ur and u.

*snickers* It's actually "you're" for "you are". But I hope nobody is grading us on grammar here, the minute we are, I shall tender my resignation immediately. And no, Tomshare is not entitled to regular visitations with my kitty cat.

As far as your choice in SSD goes, its your call. From what I understand of SmartResponse caching, its not quite as fast as using an SSD as primary boot. It depends on your budget and how much of the extra umph you want. In your opening post you didn't specify which it is that you wanted, so while I'm not going to back SerialKiller's play so to speak, I can see why it would be assumed that what you wanted was an SSD boot drive, not a cache.

I wont necessarily back loonium's play either, because I'm of the opinion that at current pricing, SSDs aren't worth the performance boost period. But this is coming from me who is not a heavy gamer. This is a matter of personal preference and budget. I certainly won't say they're a waste for a home user/gamer such as yourself as he said. It depends on your needs and expectations.